Vernacular architecture made use of local materials such as stone, turf and, where available, wood. Most of the population was housed in small hamlets and isolated dwellings. The most common form of dwelling throughout Scotland was the long house, shared by humans and animals. About ten percent of the population lived in the burghs, in a mixture of half-timbered and stone houses.
The impact of the Renaissance on Scottish architecture began in the reign of James III in the late fifteenth century with the rebuilding of royal palaces such as Linlithgow, and reached its peak under James V. The Reformation had a major impact on ecclesiastical architecture from the mid-sixteenth century onward, resulting in simple church buildings, devoid of ornamentation. From the 1560s great private houses were built in a distinctive style that became known as Scottish Baronial. Such houses combined Renaissance features with those of Scottish castles and tower houses, resulting in larger, more comfortable residences.
After the Restoration in 1660, there was a fashion for grand private houses in designs influenced by the Palladian style and associated with the architects Sir William Bruce (1630–1710) and James Smith (c. 1645–1731). After the Act of Union in 1707, the threat of Jacobite Rebellions led to the building of military defences such as Fort George near Inverness. Scotland produced some of the most significant architects of the eighteenth century, including Colen Campbell, James Gibbs and William Adam, who all had a major influence on Georgian architecture across Britain. The influence of Gibbs led to churches that employed classical elements, with a pedimented rectangular plan and often with a steeple.
The six-storey Gladstone's Land, Edinburgh, demonstrating the tendency to build up in the growing burghs
The vernacular architecture of Scotland, as elsewhere, made use of local materials and methods. The homes of the poor were usually of very simple construction, and were built by groups of family and friends.[1] Stone is plentiful throughout Scotland and was a common building material, employed in both mortared and dry stone construction. As in English vernacular architecture, where wood was available, crucks (pairs of curved timbers) were often used to support the roof. With a lack of long span structural timber, the crucks were sometimes raised and supported on the walls.[2] Walls were often built of stone, and could have gaps filled with turf, or plastered with clay. In some regions wattled walls filled in with turf were employed, sometimes on a stone base.[2] Turf-filled walls were not long-lasting, and had to be rebuilt perhaps as often as every two or three years. In some regions, including the south-west and around Dundee, solid clay walls were used, or combinations of clay, turf and straw, rendered with clay or lime to make them weatherproof.[3] Different regions used turfs, or thatch of broom, heather, straw or reeds for roofing.[1]
Most of the early modern population, in both the Lowlands and Highlands, was housed in small hamlets and isolated dwellings.[4] As the population expanded, some of these settlements were sub-divided to create new hamlets and more marginal land was settled, with shielings (clusters of huts occupied while summer pasture was being used for grazing), becoming permanent settlements.[5] The standard layout of a house throughout Scotland before agricultural improvement was a byre-dwelling or long house, with humans and livestock sharing a common roof, often separated by only a partition wall.[6] Contemporaries noted that cottages in the Highlands and Islands tended to be cruder, with single rooms, slit windows and earthen floors, often shared by a large family. In contrast, many Lowland cottages had distinct rooms and chambers, were clad with plaster or paint and even had glazed windows.[1]
Perhaps ten percent of the population lived in one of many burghs that had grown up in the later Medieval period, mainly in the east and south of the country.[7] A characteristic of Scottish burghs was a long main street of tall buildings, with vennels, wynds and alleys leading off it, many of which survive today.[8] In towns, traditional thatched half-timbered houses were interspersed with the larger stone and slate-roofed town houses of merchants and the urban gentry.[1] Most wooden thatched houses have not survived, but stone houses of the period can be seen in Edinburgh at Lady Stair's House, Acheson House and the six-storey Gladstone's Land, an early example of the tendency to build upward in the increasingly crowded towns, producing horizontally divided tenements.[9] Many burghs acquired tollbooths in this period, which acted as town halls, courts and prisons. They often had peels of bells or clock towers and the aspect of a fortress. The Old Tolbooth, Edinburgh was rebuilt on the orders of Mary Queen of Scots from 1561 and housed the parliament until the end of the 1630s.[10] Other examples can be seen at Tain, Culross and Stonehaven, often showing influences from the Low Countries in their crow-stepped gables and steeples.[11]
Linlithgow Palace, the first building to bear the title "palace" in Scotland, extensively rebuilt along Renaissance principles from the fifteenth century
The extensive building and rebuilding of royal palaces probably began under James III (r. 1460–88), accelerated under James IV (r. 1488–1513) and reached its peak under James V (r. 1513–42). The influence of Renaissance architecture is reflected in these buildings. Linlithgow was first constructed under James I (r. 1406–27), under the direction of master of work John de Waltoun and was referred to as a palace from 1429, apparently the first use of this term in the country. It was extended under James III and resembled a quadrangular, corner-towered Italian signorial palace or palatium ad moden castri (a castle-style palace), combining classical symmetry with neo-chivalric imagery. There is evidence that Italian masons were employed by James IV, in whose reign Linlithgow was completed and other palaces were rebuilt with Italianate proportions.[12]
In 1536 James V visited France for his marriage to Madeleine of Valois and would have come in contact with French Renaissance architecture. His second marriage to Mary of Guise two years later may have resulted in longer-term connections and influences.[13] Architecture from his reign largely disregarded the insular style of England under Henry VIII and adopted forms that were recognisably European.[14] Rather than slavishly copying continental forms, most Scottish architecture incorporated elements of these styles into traditional local patterns,[15] adapting them to Scottish idioms and materials (particularly stone and harl).[16] Some decorative wood carvings were made by French craftsmen, who like Andrew Mansioun, settled in Scotland.[17] The building at Linlithgow was followed by rebuilding at Holyrood Palace, Falkland Palace, Stirling Castle and Edinburgh Castle,[15] described by Roger Mason as "some of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in Britain".[18]
Burntisland Parish Kirk, its original wooden steeple now replaced by one of stone
From about 1560, the Reformation revolutionised church architecture in Scotland. Calvinists rejected ornamentation in places of worship, seeing no need for elaborate buildings divided up for the purpose of ritual. This resulted in the widespread destruction of Medieval church furnishings, ornaments and decoration.[22] New churches were built and existent churches adapted for reformed services, particularly by placing the pulpit centrally in the church, as preaching was at the centre of worship. Many of the earliest buildings were simple gabled rectangles, a style that continued into the seventeenth century, as at Dunnottar Castle in the 1580s, Greenock (1591) and Durness (1619).[23] These churches often have windows on the south wall (and none on the north), which became a characteristic of Reformation kirks. There were continuities with pre-Reformation materials, with some churches using rubble for walls, as at Kemback in Fife (1582). Others employed dressed stone and a few added wooden steeples, as at Burntisland (1592).[24] The church of Greyfriars, Edinburgh, built between 1602 and 1620, used a rectangular layout with a largely Gothic form, but that at Dirleton (1612), had a more sophisticated classical style.[23]
A variation of the rectangular church developed in post-Reformation Scotland, and often used when adapting existing churches, was the T-shaped plan, which allowed the maximum number of parishioners to be near the pulpit. Examples can be seen at Kemback and Prestonpans after 1595. This plan continued to be used into the seventeenth century as at Weem (1600), Anstruther Easter, Fife (1634–44) and New Cumnock (1657). In the seventeenth century a Greek cross plan was used for churches such as Cawdor (1619) and Fenwick (1643). In most of these cases one arm of the cross would have been closed off as a laird's aisle, meaning that they were in effect T-plan churches.[23]
The sixteenth-century Claypotts Castle, showing many of the features of the Baronial style
The unique style of great private houses in Scotland, later known as Scots Baronial, originated in the 1560s and may have been influenced by the French masons brought to Scotland to work on royal palaces. It kept many of the features of the high walled Medieval castles that had been largely made obsolete by gunpowder weapons and also drew on the tower houses and peel towers[25] that had been built in their hundreds by local lords since the fourteenth century, particularly in the borders. These houses abandoned the defensible curtain walls of castles, being fortified refuges that were designed to outlast a raid, rather than a sustained siege.[26][27] They were usually of three stories, typically crowned with a parapet, projecting on corbels, continuing into circular bartizans at each corner.[28] The new houses built from the late sixteenth century by nobles and lairds were primarily designed for comfort, not for defence. They retained many of the external features that had become associated with nobility but with a larger ground plan, classically a "Z-plan" of a rectangular block with towers, as at Colliston Castle (1583) and Claypotts Castle (1569–88).[25]
William Wallace, the king's master mason from 1617 until his death in 1631, was particularly influential. He worked on the rebuilding of the collapsed North Range of Linlithgow from 1618, Winton House for George Seton, 3rd Earl of Winton, Moray House for the Countess of Home, and began work on Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh. He adopted a distinctive style that applied elements of Scottish fortification and Flemish influences to a Renaissance plan similar to that used at Château d'Ancy-le-Franc. This style can be seen in lords' houses built at Caerlaverlock (1620), Moray House, Edinburgh (1628) and Drumlanrig Castle (1675–89), and was highly influential until the Baronial style gave way to the grander English forms associated with Inigo Jones in the later seventeenth century.[25]
Detail of a map of Aberdeen in 1661, showing the fort erected during the Commonwealth
During the turbulent era of the Civil Wars and the incorporation of Scotland into a Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, significant building in Scotland was largely confined to military architecture. Polygonal fortresses with triangular bastions in the style of the trace italienne were built to house English soldiers at Ayr, Perth and Leith, and 20 smaller forts were built as far apart as Orkney and Stornoway. Control of the Highlands was secured by new strongpoints at Inverlocky and Inverness.[29] The universities saw an improvement in their funding, as they were given income from deaneries, defunct bishoprics and the excise, allowing the completion of buildings including the college in the High Street in Glasgow.[30] After the Restoration in 1660, large-scale building began again, influenced by a growing interest in Classicism.[29]
Kinross House, one of the first Palladian houses in Britain
Sir William Bruce (c. 1630–1710) is considered "the effective founder of classical architecture in Scotland" and was the key figure in introducing the Palladian style to the country. Andrea Palladio (1508–80) was an influential architect who worked in the region of Venice in the sixteenth century and whose buildings are characterised by symmetry, fine proportion and formal elements drawn from Ancient Classical architecture. In England the introduction of the Palladian style is associated with Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Bruce's architectural style incorporated Palladian elements and was influenced by Jones, but also borrowed from the Italian Baroque and was most strongly influenced by Sir Christopher Wren's (1632–1723) interpretation of the Baroque in England.[31] Bruce popularised a style of country house among the Scottish nobility that encouraged a move towards a more leisure-oriented architecture already adopted in continental Europe.[32] He built and remodelled country houses, including Thirlestane Castle and Prestonfield House.[33] Among his most significant work was his own Palladian mansion at Kinross, built on the Loch Leven estate he had purchased in 1675.[33] Bruce's houses were predominantly built using well-cut ashlar masonry on the façades; rubble stonework was used only for internal walls.[34] As the Surveyor and Overseer of the Royal Works Bruce undertook the rebuilding of the Royal Palace of Holyroodhouse in the 1670s, giving the palace its present appearance.[32] After the death of Charles II in 1685, Bruce lost political favour, and following the Glorious Revolution of 1688 he was imprisoned more than once as a suspected Jacobite.[35]
James Smith (c. 1645–1731) worked as a mason on Bruce's rebuilding of Holyrood Palace. In 1683 he was appointed Surveyor and Overseer of the Royal Works, responsible for the palace's maintenance. With his father-in-law, the master mason Robert Mylne (1633–1710), Smith worked on Caroline Park in Edinburgh (1685), and Drumlanrig Castle (1680s). Smith's country houses followed the pattern established by William Bruce, with hipped roofs and pedimented fronts, in a plain but handsome Palladian style.[32]Hamilton Palace (1695) was fronted by giant Corinthian columns, and a pedimented entrance, but was otherwise restrained. Dalkeith Palace (1702–10) was modelled after William of Orange's palace at Het Loo in the Netherlands.[36]
By the later seventeenth century both the Presbyterian and Episcopalian wings of the church had adopted the modestly sized and plain form of churches that had emerged after the Reformation.[37] Most had a centralised plan with two or three arms, in a rectangular or T-planned arrangement. Steeples continued to be a major feature, either centrally on the long axis, or on an end gable, as had been the case in pre-Reformation churches.[37] As a result, there was little of the Baroque extravagance in church building seen on the continent and England.[36] Some minor innovations may indicate a move back toward episcopacy in the Restoration era. Lauder Church was built by Bruce in 1673 for the Duke of Lauderdale, who championed the bishops in the reign of Charles II. The Gothic windows may have emphasised antiquity, but its basic Greek cross plan remained within the existing common framework of new churches.[37]
The major exceptions to the common Greek cross plan are in the work of Smith, who had become a Jesuit in his youth.[38] These included the rebuilding of Holyrood Abbey undertaken for James VII in 1687, which was outfitted in an elaborate style. In 1691 Smith designed the mausoleum of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, in Greyfriars Kirkyard, a circular structure modelled on the Tempietto di San Pietro, designed by Donato Bramante (1444–1514).[36] The drive to Episcopalian forms of worship may have resulted in more linear patterns, including rectangular plans with the pulpit at the end opposite the entrance. The Latin Cross form increasingly popular in Counter Reformation Catholicism, was also used, as in Smith's Canongate Kirk (1688–90), but the Presbyterian revolution of 1689–90 occurred before its completion and the chancel was blocked up, effectively transforming it into a T-plan.[38]
After the Act of Union of 1707, growing prosperity in Scotland led to a spate of new building, both public and private. The threat of Jacobite insurrection or invasion meant that Scotland saw more military building than England in this period. Military structures relied on the strength of inclined and angled engineered masonry and earthen toppings to deflect and absorb artillery fire. This spate of military building culminated in the construction of Fort George near Inverness (1748–69), with its projecting bastions and redoubts.[34]
Scotland produced some of the most significant architects of the early eighteenth century, including Colen Campbell (1676–1729), James Gibbs (1682–1754) and William Adam (1689–1748), all of whom were influenced by Classical architecture. Campbell was influenced by the Palladian style and has been credited with founding Georgian architecture. Architectural historian Howard Colvin has speculated that he was associated with James Smith and may even have been his pupil.[32] He spent most of his career in Italy and England and developed a rivalry with fellow Scot James Gibbs, who trained in Rome and also practised mainly in England. Campbell's architectural style incorporated Palladian elements, as well as forms from the Italian Baroque and Inigo Jones, but was most strongly influenced by Sir Christopher Wren's interpretation of the Baroque.[31]William Adam, the foremost Scottish architect of his time,[39][40] designed and built numerous country houses and public buildings. Among his best known works are Hopetoun House near Edinburgh, and Duff House in Banff. His individual, exuberant, style was built on the Palladian style, but with Baroque motifs inspired by the work of John Vanbrugh and Continental architecture. After his death, his sons Robert and John took on the family business and became the leading British architects of the second half of the century.[41]
St. Andrew's in the Square, Glasgow shows the neo-classical influence
In the eighteenth century established patterns of church building continued, with T-shaped plans with steeples on the long side, as at New Church, Dumfries (1724–27), and Newbattle Parish Church (1727–29). William Adam's Hamilton Parish Church (1729–32), was a Greek cross plan inscribed in a circle, while John Douglas's Killin Church (1744) was octagonal. Scots-born architect James Gibbs was highly influential on British ecclesiastical architecture. He introduced a consciously antique style in his rebuilding of St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, with a massive, steepled portico and rectangular, side-aisled plan. Similar patterns in Scotland can be seen at St Andrew's in the Square (1737–59), designed by Allan Dreghorn and built by the master mason Mungo Nasmyth, and at the smaller Donibristle Chapel (completed in 1731), designed by Alexander McGill. Gibbs' own design for St. Nicholas West, Aberdeen (1752–55), had the same rectangular plan, with a nave-and-aisles, barrel-vaulted layout with superimposed pedimented front.[38] After the Toleration Act of 1712, Episcopalians began building a limited number of new chapels including Alexander Jaffray's St Paul's chapel in Aberdeen (1721), the meeting house designed by McGill in Montrose, an Edinburgh chapel opened in 1722 and St Andrew's-by-the-Green in Glasgow (1750–52), which adopted a simpler version of Gibbs' pedimented rectangular plan.[42]
1 2 3 4 C. McKean, "Improvement and modernisation in everyday Enlightenment Scotland", in E. A. Foyster and C. A. Whatley, ed., A History of Everyday Life in Scotland, 1600 to 1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), ISBN0-7486-1965-8, pp.55–56.
↑ R. W. Brunskill, Houses and Cottages of Britain (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2nd edn., 2000), ISBN0-575-07122-2, pp. 235–40.
↑ I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape: 1500–1800 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1991), ISBN0415029929, p. 5.
↑ I. D. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape: 1500–1800 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1991), ISBN0415029929, pp. 18–19.
↑ I. Whyte and K. A. Whyte, The Changing Scottish Landscape: 1500–1800 (London: Taylor & Francis, 1991), ISBN0-415-02992-9, p. 35.
↑ E. Gemmill and N. J. Mayhew, Changing Values in Medieval Scotland: a Study of Prices, Money, and Weights and Measures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), ISBN0521473853, pp. 8–10.
↑ R. Mitchison, Lordship to Patronage, Scotland 1603–1745 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983), ISBN0-7486-0233-X, pp.99–100.
↑ T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN0-85263-748-9, pp. 75–76.
↑ R. A. Mason, Scots and Britons: Scottish Political Thought and the Union of 1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ISBN0521026202, p. 82.
↑ T. W. West, Discovering Scottish Architecture (Botley: Osprey, 1985), ISBN0-85263-748-9, pp. 73–74.
↑ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p. 9.
↑ A. Thomas, The Renaissance, in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN0-19-162433-0, p. 195.
↑ J. Wormald, Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991), ISBN0-7486-0276-3, p. 5.
1 2 A. Thomas, "The Renaissance", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN0-19-162433-0, p. 189.
↑ D. M. Palliser, The Cambridge Urban History of Britain: 600–1540, Volume 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), ISBN0-521-44461-6, pp.391–2.
↑ Michael Pearce, 'A French Furniture Maker and the 'Courtly Style' in Sixteenth-Century Scotland', Regional Furniture vol. XXXII (2018), pp. 127-36.
↑ R. Mason, "Renaissance and Reformation: the sixteenth century", in J. Wormald, ed., Scotland: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ISBN0-19-162243-5, p. 102.
↑ J. E. A. Dawson, Scotland Re-Formed, 1488–1587 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7486-1455-9, p. 120.
↑ Amadio Ronchini, 'Lorenzo Pomarelli' in Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie Modenesi e Parmensi (Modena, 1868), pp. 264-5, 271.
↑ A. Thomas, "The Renaissance", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), ISBN0-19-162433-0, pp.201–2.
1 2 3 A. Spicer, "Architecture", in A. Pettegree, ed., The Reformation World (London: Routledge, 2000), ISBN0-415-16357-9, p. 517.
↑ A. Spicer, Calvinist Churches in Early Modern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), ISBN0-7190-5487-7, pp. 53 and 57.
1 2 3 J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 9th edn., 1993), ISBN0-300-05886-1, pp. 502–11.
↑ S. Toy, Castles: Their Construction and History (New York: Dover Publications, 1985), ISBN978-0-486-24898-1, p. 224.
↑ S. Reid, Castles and Tower Houses of the Scottish Clans, 1450–1650 (Botley: Osprey, 2006), ISBN978-1-84176-962-2, p. 33.
↑ J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 to 1830 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 9th edn., 1993), ISBN0-300-05886-1, p. 502.
1 2 M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), ISBN978-0-7486-0849-2, p. 70.
↑ J. D. Mackie, B. Lenman and G. Parker, A History of Scotland (London: Penguin, 1991), ISBN0140136495, pp. 227–8.
1 2 J. Summerson, Architecture of Britain, 1530–1830 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 9th edition, 1993), ISBN0-300-05886-1, pp. 330 and 333.
1 2 3 4 H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1995), pp.755–8.
1 2 J. Gifford, William Adam 1689–1748 (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing/RIAS, 1989), ISBN1-85158-295-9, pp.57–58.
1 2 I. Maxwell, A History of Scotland's Masonry Construction in P. Wilson, ed., Building with Scottish Stone (Edinburgh: Arcamedia, 2005), ISBN1-904320-02-3, p. 26.
↑ H. Fenwick, Architect Royal: the Life and Work of Sir William Bruce (Kineton: Roundwood Press, 1970), ISBN0-8390-0156-8, pp. 73–8.
1 2 3 J. Gifford, William Adam 1689–1748 (Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing/RIAS, 1989), ISBN1-85158-295-9, pp.62–7.
1 2 3 M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p.141.
1 2 3 M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p.143.
↑ C. McWilliam, The Buildings of Scotland: Lothian (except Edinburgh) (London: Penguin, 1978), p. 57.
↑ M. Glendinning, A. McKechnie, R. McInnes Building a Nation: The Story of Scotland's Architecture (Canongate, 1999), ISBN0-86241-830-5, p. 48.
↑ N. Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (London: Pelican, 2nd edition, 1951), p. 237.
↑ M. Glendinning, R. MacInnes and A. MacKechnie, A History of Scottish Architecture: From the Renaissance to the Present Day (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996), ISBN0-7486-0849-4, p.143-4.
Castles have played an important military, economic and social role in Great Britain and Ireland since their introduction following the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Although a small number of castles had been built in England in the 1050s, the Normans began to build motte and bailey and ringwork castles in large numbers to control their newly occupied territories in England and the Welsh Marches. During the 12th century the Normans began to build more castles in stone – with characteristic square keep – that played both military and political roles. Royal castles were used to control key towns and the economically important forests, while baronial castles were used by the Norman lords to control their widespread estates. David I invited Anglo-Norman lords into Scotland in the early 12th century to help him colonise and control areas of his kingdom such as Galloway; the new lords brought castle technologies with them and wooden castles began to be established over the south of the kingdom. Following the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 1170s, under Henry II, castles were established there too.
Castles are buildings that combine fortifications and residence, and many were built within the borders of modern Scotland. They arrived in Scotland with the introduction of feudalism in the twelfth century. Initially these were wooden motte-and-bailey constructions, but many were replaced by stone castles with a high curtain wall. During the Wars of Independence, Robert the Bruce pursued a policy of castle slighting. In the Late Middle Ages, new castles were built, some on a grander scale as "livery and maintenance" castles that could support a large garrison. Gunpowder weaponry led to the use of gun ports, platforms to mount guns and walls adapted to resist bombardment.
William Adam was a Scottish architect, mason, and entrepreneur. He was the foremost architect of his time in Scotland, designing and building numerous country houses and public buildings, and often acting as contractor as well as architect. Among his best known works are Hopetoun House near Edinburgh, and Duff House in Banff. His individual, exuberant style built on the Palladian style, but with Baroque details inspired by Vanbrugh and Continental architecture.
The New Town is a central area of Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. It was built in stages between 1767 and around 1850, and retains much of its original neo-classical and Georgian period architecture. Its best known street is Princes Street, facing Edinburgh Castle and the Old Town across the geological depression of the former Nor Loch. Together with the West End, the New Town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside the Old Town in 1995. The area is also famed for the New Town Gardens, a heritage designation since March 2001.
Scottish baronial or Scots baronial is an architectural style of 19th-century Gothic Revival which revived the forms and ornaments of historical architecture of Scotland in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. Reminiscent of Scottish castles, buildings in the Scots baronial style are characterised by elaborate rooflines embellished with conical roofs, tourelles, and battlements with machicolations, often with an asymmetric plan. Popular during the fashion for Romanticism and the Picturesque, Scots baronial architecture was equivalent to the Jacobethan Revival of 19th-century England, and likewise revived the Late Gothic appearance of the fortified domestic architecture of the elites in the Late Middle Ages and the architecture of the Jacobean era.
James Smith was a Scottish architect, who pioneered the Palladian style in Scotland. He was described by Colen Campbell, in his Vitruvius Britannicus (1715–1725), as "the most experienced architect of that kingdom".
Invergarry Castle in the Scottish Highlands was the seat of the Chiefs of the Clan MacDonell of Glengarry, a powerful branch of the Clan Donald.
John Mylne, sometimes known as "John Mylne junior", or "the Younger", was a Scottish master mason and architect who served as Master Mason to the Crown of Scotland. Born in Perth, he was the son of John Mylne, also a master mason, and Isobel Wilson.
Scotland in the early modern period refers, for the purposes of this article, to Scotland between the death of James IV in 1513 and the end of the Jacobite risings in the mid-eighteenth century. It roughly corresponds to the early modern period in Europe, beginning with the Renaissance and Reformation and ending with the start of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.
The architecture of the United Kingdom, or British architecture, consists of a combination of architectural styles, dating as far back to Roman architecture, to the present day 21st century contemporary. England has seen the most influential developments, though Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have each fostered unique styles and played leading roles in the international history of architecture. Although there are prehistoric and classical structures in the United Kingdom, British architectural history effectively begins with the first Anglo-Saxon Christian churches, built soon after Augustine of Canterbury arrived in Great Britain in 597. Norman architecture was built on a vast scale throughout Great Britain and Ireland from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominions. English Gothic architecture, which flourished between 1180 until around 1520, was initially imported from France, but quickly developed its own unique qualities.
The architecture of Scotland includes all human building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the Neolithic era to the present day. The earliest surviving houses go back around 9500 years, and the first villages 6000 years: Skara Brae on the Mainland of Orkney being the earliest preserved example in Europe. Crannogs, roundhouses, each built on an artificial island, date from the Bronze Age and stone buildings called Atlantic roundhouses and larger earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans from about 71 AD led to the creation of forts like that at Trimontium, and a continuous fortification between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde known as the Antonine Wall, built in the second century AD. Beyond Roman influence, there is evidence of wheelhouses and underground souterrains. After the departure of the Romans there were a series of nucleated hill forts, often utilising major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dunbarton.
The Dome is a building on George Street in the New Town of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom. It currently functions as a bar, restaurant and nightclub, although it was first built as the headquarters of the Commercial Bank of Scotland in 1847. The building was designed by David Rhind in a Graeco-Roman style. It stands on the site of the Physicians' Hall, the offices of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, which was constructed in the 18th century to designs by James Craig, the planner of the New Town. The Dome is a category A listed building. The current operating business is Caledonian Heritable, a hotel, bars and restaurant group founded by Portobello born entrepreneur Kevin Doyle
The Renaissance in Scotland was a cultural, intellectual and artistic movement in Scotland, from the late fifteenth century to the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late fourteenth century and reaching northern Europe as a Northern Renaissance in the fifteenth century. It involved an attempt to revive the principles of the classical era, including humanism, a spirit of scholarly enquiry, scepticism, and concepts of balance and proportion. Since the twentieth century, the uniqueness and unity of the Renaissance has been challenged by historians, but significant changes in Scotland can be seen to have taken place in education, intellectual life, literature, art, architecture, music, science and politics.
The architecture of Scotland in the Middle Ages includes all building within the modern borders of Scotland, between the departure of the Romans from Northern Britain in the early fifth century and the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century, and includes vernacular, ecclesiastical, royal, aristocratic and military constructions. The first surviving houses in Scotland go back 9500 years. There is evidence of different forms of stone and wooden houses exist and earthwork hill forts from the Iron Age. The arrival of the Romans led to the abandonment of many of these forts. After the departure of the Romans in the fifth century, there is evidence of the building of a series of smaller "nucleated" constructions sometimes utilizing major geographical features, as at Dunadd and Dumbarton. In the following centuries new forms of construction emerged throughout Scotland that would come to define the landscape.
Architecture in modern Scotland encompasses all building in Scotland, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the present day. The most significant architect of the early twentieth century was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who mixed elements of traditional Scottish architecture with contemporary movements. Estate house design declined in importance in the twentieth century. In the early decades of the century, traditional materials began to give way to cheaper modern ones. After the First World War, Modernism and the office block began to dominate building in the major cities and attempts began to improve the quality of urban housing for the poor, resulted in a massive programme of council house building. The Neo-Gothic style continued in to the twentieth century but the most common forms in this period were plain and massive Neo-Romanesque buildings.
Architecture of Scotland in the Industrial Revolution includes all building in Scotland between the mid-eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century. During this period, the country underwent an economic and social transformation as a result of industrialisation, which was reflected in new architectural forms, techniques and scale of building. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Edinburgh was the focus of a classically inspired building boom that reflected the growing wealth and confidence of the capital. Housing often took the form of horizontally divided tenement flats. Some of the leading European architects during this period were Scottish, including Robert Adam and William Chambers.
Church architecture in Scotland incorporates all church building within the modern borders of Scotland, from the earliest Christian structures in the sixth century until the present day. The early Christian churches for which there is evidence are basic masonry-built constructions on the west coast and islands. As Christianity spread, local churches tended to remain much simpler than their English counterparts. By the eighth century more sophisticated ashlar block-built buildings began to be constructed. From the eleventh century, there were larger and more ornate Romanesque buildings, as with Dunfermline Abbey and St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney. From the twelfth century the introduction of new monastic orders led to a boom in ecclesiastical building, often using English and Continental forms. From the thirteenth century elements of the European Gothic style began to appear in Scotland, culminating in buildings such as Glasgow Cathedral and the rebuilt Melrose Abbey. Renaissance influences can be seen in a move to a low-massive style that was probably influenced by contacts with Italy and the Netherlands.
Estate houses in Scotland or Scottish country houses, are large houses usually on landed estates in Scotland. They were built from the sixteenth century, after defensive castles began to be replaced by more comfortable residences for royalty, nobility and local lairds. The origins of Scottish estate houses are in aristocratic emulation of the extensive building and rebuilding of royal residences, beginning with Linlithgow, under the influence of Renaissance architecture. In the 1560s the unique Scottish style of the Scots baronial emerged, which combined features from medieval castles, tower houses, and peel towers with Renaissance plans, in houses designed primarily for residence rather than defence.
Art in early modern Scotland includes all forms of artistic production within the modern borders of Scotland, between the adoption of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century to the beginnings of the Enlightenment in the mid-eighteenth century.
The Royal Court of Scotland was the administrative, political and artistic centre of the Kingdom of Scotland. It emerged in the tenth century and continued until it ceased to function when James VI inherited the throne of England in 1603. For most of the medieval era, the king had no "capital" as such. The Pictish centre of Forteviot was the chief royal seat of the early Gaelic Kingdom of Alba that became the Kingdom of Scotland. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scone was a centre for royal business. Edinburgh only began to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III but his successors undertook occasional royal progress to a part of the kingdom. Little is known about the structure of the Scottish royal court in the period before the reign of David I when it began to take on a distinctly feudal character, with the major offices of the Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor. By the early modern era the court consisted of leading nobles, office holders, ambassadors and supplicants who surrounded the king or queen. The Chancellor was now effectively the first minister of the kingdom and from the mid-sixteenth century he was the leading figure of the Privy Council.
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